


Pizza Night

by cel10e



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-04-03 11:30:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4099384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cel10e/pseuds/cel10e
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Why do we have pizza night, anyway,” Ianto muses, shifting against the corner of the bench seat.</p><p>Five heads turn. Three people pause mid-bite. Jack looks like he’s considering pulling out a weapon. </p><p>“What’s wrong with pizza night?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pizza Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beastofthesky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beastofthesky/gifts).



“Why do we have pizza night, anyway,” Ianto muses, shifting against the corner of the bench seat.

Five heads turn. Three people pause mid-bite. Jack looks like he’s considering pulling out a weapon.

“What’s wrong with pizza night?” Owen asks, slowly, like he’s talking to a child.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Ianto backpedals, “it’s just that — well, we have pizza every night.”

Rhys chokes on a giggle. “You have pizza every night down there? I thought this was some special _team bonding_ thing.”

“No, no, he’s right,” Tosh answers. “I don’t even remember when pizza night started, actually.”

“But we have pizza every night,” Ianto repeats, his tone taking on the slightest twinge of hysteria. Jack muffles a smile into his next bite.

“It’s pizza night because we actually _go out_ for the pizza, instead of just bringing it to the Hub and leaving it out for people to grab when they’re hungry.” When everyone looks at Gwen, she shrugs. “I’m always the one who gets it. I think Owen’s just convinced the pizza box on the coffee table refills itself at four every day.”

Mollified with that answer, Ianto shrugs, taking another bite. Owen takes the opportunity to steer the conversation away from his pizza-related complacency and back to the original topic, which had involved Jack, three married aliens, and an assassination attempt. Rhys loudly protests several aspects of the story that most of them don’t even blink at anymore, and the pizza night crisis is quickly forgotten.

****  
  


\----------

****  
  


It comes up again two weeks later, after a long, grueling Weevil chase through a residential neighborhood. Gwen pulls around the corner with Owen in her passenger seat and a sedated Weevil in the boot of her car, while Jack and Tosh wrestle the other two into the SUV. Everyone gets out and stares at each other for about a minute, and then Ianto’s voice filters over the radio.

“Pizza night,” he says.

Tosh lights up like it’s the best news she’s ever heard, and Owen hauls the Weevil out of Gwen’s car with the single-minded efficiency of a starving man. Gwen nods like she’s just received an order and speeds off to pick up Rhys the minute Owen’s hand slams the boot closed. Jack — drives.

Gwen and Rhys meet them at the Hub just as Jack emerges, buttoning up a fresh, non-Weevil-slashed version of the shirt he had been wearing earlier. Owen and Tosh have secured the Weevils and are logging the captures with record speed, and no sooner has Gwen snagged the keys to the SUV that everyone is bundling out the door behind her.

Except that no one really quite pays attention to where she takes them, and so when she pulls up in front of a Thai place instead of their usual pizza night haunt, the team makes it all the way inside the front entry before Ianto points out the obvious. “This isn’t pizza,” he says, slowly, halfway through picking out a table ( _booth, back left, easily defensible_ ) before really taking time to notice the distinctly non-pizza decor.

“Nope,” Gwen replies. “Didn’t feel like pizza.”

“But —  _pizza night_ ,” Ianto protests, weakly, and earns himself a glare. “Fine. Whatever.” He puts his hands up in surrender, and makes for the booth.

It turns out that they all enjoy Thai, and even Ianto admits to himself that it was sort of nice to _not_ have pizza for one night. Even if the Torchwood bank account (which is, more or less, _his_ bank account, since no one but him and occasionally Jack ever look at it) has to fork out a little more for their weekly meal than normal, it’s not something they’d ever go out for separately, and they can certainly afford the occasional treat.

So, they have Thai on pizza night, and it’s not the end of the world.

\----------

It becomes a bit of a habit after that: whoever’s been driving the SUV that day chooses where they go for pizza night. It does end up actually being pizza roughly half the time, because Ianto and Tosh try their best to stick to the literal interpretation, but with Owen, Jack, and Gwen, no one quite knows what they’ll end up eating.

(Rhys never chooses, because Rhys never drives. He ribs them about it a bit, but he turns out to be the least picky eater of all of them, except perhaps for Jack, and will happily put Torchwood’s appetites to shame at whatever eating establishment he finds himself.)

Ianto tries a few more times to protest that they really should be eating _pizza_ on _pizza night_ , and while the others are sympathetic to his logic, it turns out that they just really don’t care. Even Tosh, who often plays mediator between Ianto's careful order and Owen's blissful hedonism, has to admit that she enjoys the non-pizza pizza nights more than the pizza ones, and then Ianto just gives up.

\----------

“Pizza night,” Martha repeats, skeptically.

It’s the last night before she leaves, and since they’d missed the previous week due to … unforeseen circumstances, Jack had made it clear that there would be no excuses for anyone this week. (Owen had raised his hand at the “anyone” bit, but at Jack’s glare, he had put it right back down again, and meekly trundled along into the SUV with the rest of the team.)

“ _Pizza_ night,” she repeats again, waving the menu for emphasis. Pancakes, waffles, omelets, and all manner of brightly-coloured breakfast foods are strewn across the page. Including —

“Breakfast pizza,” Jack points out, gesturing with a straw toward an item at the bottom. Gwen stifles a laugh.

“We do get pizza sometimes,” Tosh points out, helpfully. “Depends on who’s driving.”

Martha looks between the three of them, clearly fighting the urge to try and make sense of the situation, and sighs. Ianto shoots her a sympathetic ‘what can you do’ look, and points out one of the specials.

She gets chocolate chip pancakes, after much deliberation, and enjoys them thoroughly. 

\----------

Gwen comes back to the Hub five days after Gray’s attack on the city. Torchwood is still working through a massive amount of damage control, coordinating cleanup efforts and fielding calls from seemingly every business, agency and committee in the city, and although Jack officially gave her two weeks off, it does her (and the others, too, though they won't admit it) good to be back at work.

They work around each other quietly, awkwardly, at first, only speaking for the necessary “sorry” and “coffee?” and “call for you”. They pack up Owen and Tosh’s belongings, log out of their terminals, and watch Tosh’s message, and as they stand there, realigning themselves into _three_ , Gwen speaks again, softer.

“Pizza night?”

(It’s two days early, and the first time it’s actually been pizza in weeks, and maybe they all shed a few tears into the pepperoni but it’s okay, almost.)

(They’ll be okay.)

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is for the WONDERFUL [basiacat](basiacat.tumblr.com), for whom i tried very hard to keep the torchwood sads far, far away. <3


End file.
